shouting loudly

Man, some days I just love my research topic.  Yesterday, Roger L. Simon, the head of Pajamas Media, sent a letter to all Pajamas Media network bloggers indicating that, in essence, they’re all fired.  That represents about 40% of the elite conservative blogosphere according to my readings, including such major sites as Hot Air, Instapundit, Ace of Spades, and Little Green Footballs.  The implications of this decision won’t be clear for some time, but (as usual) I thought I’d offer some preliminary thoughts here:

-Maybe the most interesting part of Simon’s letter was the admission that they “disbanded the ad network part of our business for a simple reason: it was losing money and we couldn’t see how in the reasonable future that would change.”  He goes on to note that “that part of our business has been losing money from the beginning, so the people getting their quarterly checks from PJM were getting a form of stipend from us in the hopes that advertisers would start to cotton to blogs and we could possibly make a profit. Didn’t happen.”

The folks at SadlyNo have a long-running term for this – “wingnut welfare.” They often point out that individual conservative bloggers are supported by large right-wing institutions, this being just one example.  I’ve often wondered how much of this pejorative term was liberal myth vs empirical reality.  Those sort of numbers aren’t exactly made public, so it’s hard to say for sure.  Today’s decision inches me a little further towards buying it as empirical reality.

-Pajamas Media is claiming that this is all about investing in PajamasTV.  Put me down right now as a skeptic of this business model.  Yes, Apple TV, the iPhone, etc are expanding the market for web-based tv clips.  But this strikes me as a little too similar to conservative ventures like QubeTV and conservapedia.  The Right seems to have a downright unhealthy obsession with replicating nonpolitical online spaces.  It doesn’t work very well because they can’t compete with the network effects that come from the giant communities associated with YouTube or Wikipedia.  And likewise, many of the pricetags associated with these online ventures are converging towards zero.  How exactly do they expect conservative online television to turn a profit?

-There’s something morbidly entertaining in Simon’s reframing of Pajamas Media as somehow not being all about the bloggers.  Uh, dude, you named your company after a blogger stereotype.  That sort of branding sticks, y’know.

-From the coverage of this announcement on right wing blogs, it seems like there are three possible outcomes it’ll lead to.  Blogs might switch back to BlogAds and continue on as if nothing happened.  Alternately, they might start asking their readers for subscriptions/donations, though I’m curious how they’ll mitigate the free rider problem.  If neither of those work, bloggers may need to stop blogging full-time, reducing their posting activity and audience considerably.  Off the top of my head, I’d expect HotAir/Malkin, Instapundit, Ace of Spades, and Little Green Footballs to go with option 1, smaller blogs to try option 1, not make enough money, and end up with option 3, and complete morons to try option 2.  Let me say that more clearly: if bloggers start trying to charge their readers a subscription fee, they should expect a phone call from the ghost of Charles Darwin that whispers two words… Epic Fail.

-Long term, this is almost definitely a good thing for the conservative blogosphere.  I’ve been puzzled for a long time now by the continued prominence of single-author blogs on the conservative side.  Progressive bloggers have figured out that the power of the community blog, and community blogs pretty much dominate on the Left.  The software code isn’t that complicated, and the Right should have adopted these innovations by now.  I’d venture that one reason they haven’t is because they’ve had little individual incentive to do so: if you can make a living as a solo-blogger through checks from PJM or some other outlet, why merge with others or try to give your audience a bigger voice?  We’ll likely see some mid-tier conservative bloggers give up as a result of this “market adjustment” but that creates space for conservatives to finally start building community blogs, in turn letting them get marginally more competitive in the world of online organizing.

-One final thought, because I can’t contain myself. “Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.” That is all.